The new PlayStation3 game, titled Resistance: Fall of Man, which has sold more than one million copies, sees a virtual shoot-out between rival gunman with hundreds killed during a gun battle inside the cathedral in an orgy of blood.

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Wow, Sony need to hire the person who wrote this article, I'm actually interested in Resistance FoM now, it sounds awesome!

Anywho: God > Church of England, and a Sony exec told me they got a thumbs up from God:

Sweet irony, I mean organized religion is responsible for inordinate real deaths and bloodshed throughout history and they're whining over a video game?

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Yup, thousands of deaths just because someone doesn't agree with their religion and they complain about a game where you are trying to defend the earth from aliens.

Weren't there real church locations featured in many war games? Could they be next, because they were passing off a horrible war as entertainment.

The game itself ain't too bad, kinda like Medal of Honour but with aliens, should sell more copies now as its all over the news. Anyone working in game stores be prepared to say "yeah its for PS3 only, not on PS2/PSP" as most news reporters didn't state which console it was on, just that it was Playstation.

According to Juarez newspaper El Diario , the governor of the Mexican state of Chihuahua has ordered the seizure of all copies of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2.

Gov. Jose Reyes Baeza Terraces apparently took the action following recent criticism of GRAW2 by Juarez Mayor Héctor Murguía Lardizábal, who called the game, which deals with battles between an elite U.S. force an Mexican rebels,Â ”a crime against the intellectual capacity of Juarez residents.” The Juarez mayor offered this blanket condemnation:

Â Â Violent video games instill values which are upside down, and these actions are despicable because they attempt to divide the good will of the residents of American and Mexican cities.

Protection of the border between the United States and Mexico is, of course, an extremely hot political topic these days.

UPDATE 3/27/07: More in the El Paso Times, including word that Gov. Terraces reached out to Texas Congressman Silvestre Reyes (D) for help with the GRAW2 issue. No word on how Reyes reacted to the Mexican request for assistance.

I actually think it is in pretty poor taste. I don't agree with Christianity or any branches of it and I know that a lot of lives have been lost over religion. Yet I think it is wrong to disrespect the holy place of any religion, whether it be a Church/Cathedral, a Synagogue, a Mosque/Masjid or even somewhere like stone henge.

I honestly think that if the place featured was a Mosque then people would be taking it more seriously, it would be seen as some form of white racism against Muslim communities. It just seems a lot of people hold the church in low regard for some reason.

I think the world needs some form of religion to give people hope and fear. without a "greater force" it seems like people have nothing to fear, and feel free to do anything. I think if people truly believed that killing or raping someone would lead to some true suffering, then the death/rate rate would go down tremendously. I don't think religion should be used as a form of control though, not about the way we live our lives at least. I have theories that the Christian bible was written by someone who wanted to take control of people, and did so by writing a book that explained things they didn't understand (like creation) and set about guidelines. Things like not eating meat on certain days, or the rules about no sex before marriage. There's no real reasoning behind them and they seem like silly frivolous requirements that no one could ever meet. There's stuff in the bible that states that people shouldn't wear cloth woven using more than one type of thread. It's ridiculous.

To add to lagman there was a similar deal back with hitman and a Sikh temple a couple of years back as I recall, the thing is that they actually won. The only mediocre concession I can think of it that hitman is modern day and realistic.

My feelings on censorship, religion and similar matters have been debated more than once around here so I will spare you all.

Edit: Screw it, chalupa I think no sex before marriage has more to do with the church elders liking it tight and believing they are good at it: should their victim be well versed in such matters then they "will be loose" and able to tell they are getting the raw end of the deal.

See the thing you've got to remember with the Bible is that it was written in a time when no one knew what the hell STD's were (hell I don't even know if they were around - AIDS etc is quite a new diesease thought to be human made from use of monkey blood or something) and protection other than withdrawing didn't exist. You have to presume that if people went around having casual sex, there'd be alot of unwed mothers with little babies and of course, in those times it really was frowned upon.

The bible, is quite simply, outdated. In a loving relationship, where protection is used, sex causes no harm. If there was a God and he made his presence clear on earth again, I'm sure they'd re-write the bible to reflect that.

gotta side with sony on this one, I'll probably always side with gaming on issues like this, because they're always so biased and misleading.
maybe sony should've asked for permission first (I doubt they would've got it) or perhaps used a church that is free domain (if any exist)

but sorry, the church never asked those boys permission, or for the thousands of killings they're responsible for.

man I hate how they say crap like "for many young people these games offer a different sort of reality", even a catholic has to admit that the church promotes a "different sort of reality", even for the few idiots that can't draw the line between fantasy and reality, the church doesn't get to decide which fantasy world is to blame.

The main problem here is that Manchester has a very high-profile gun crime issue (example). I'm not usually one for censorship (especially in videogames) but I have to side with the church on this one.
Why did the developers feel the need to replicate the interior so perfectly? Could they not just use their creative license? Did they want to put a stupid idea into any half-brained, gun-toting teenagers in the area? (and there are retards that would do it!)

Numpties!

Quoted from Bishop of Manchester on BBC News:

"It is well known that Manchester has a gun crime problem," he said.

"For a global manufacturer to re-create one of our great cathedrals with photo-realistic quality and then encourage people to have guns battles in the building is beyond belief and highly irresponsible.

"Here in Manchester we do all we can to support communities through our parish clergy. We know the reality of gun crime and the devastating effects it can have on lives. It is not a trivial matter."

Why did the developers feel the need to replicate the interior so perfectly?

Realism? From what I've played it seems like they wanted a game that would show what it could be like if aliens invading Earth show they used real buildings. End of.

Lots and lots of films use real locations for depictions of murder, torture, rape, child molestation and all that for their "art" but when a game features people defending themselves against aliens or beasties people moan.

If this was a shoot out in a film set in a church or whatever no one would moan. Nor did they moan in countless Westerns where there were shoot outs in real American churches, where the killing was purely for entertainment values and feature human beings being gunned to fuckery.

I really don't see how kids doing shoot outs against ALIENS not humans but ALIENS in a game are going to start picking up guns, go off to a church or whatever and recreate it with their friends just because they played this game. Maybe with fake guns as playing around but thats all.

Fair enough the CoE don't want the church in the game but to come up with an excuse like that is silly and thats all I'm going to say about it as theres no point.